how change has affected Buhari

T he picture of President Muhammadu Buhari in
an Igbo dress at the peak of the presidential

election campaign must have conveyed a sense
of deep assurance to many in the face of
sustained allusions about him as a narrow-
minded person. As the candidate traversed the
country in the days leading to the election, his
message in the North, East, West, and South was
the same: he would fight corruption,
unemployment, and insecurity. While his
message was consistent, Buhari’s dressing
changed with every geopolitical zone. Candidate
Buhari changed his attire to reflect his audience
in a way that gave optimism that he was not (or
no longer) the taciturn and unbending gentleman
officer that his antagonists were at that time
portraying him to be.
To the people of the Niger Delta who were being
asked to toss away their son in favour of the
more disciplined Fulani man, the picture of
Buhari in Ijaw attire almost looking like Goodluck
Jonathan would have made some sense. The
Buhari campaign also released a picture of the
candidate in suit with both long and bow ties in a
fitting riposte to those who saw the candidate as
an enemy of the West. The message was clear:
to the Igbo, Yoruba, and even the Niger Deltan;
Buhari was a man to be trusted to protect the
interests of Nigerians irrespective of tribe or
creed.
In the campaign buses as the members of the
Presidential Campaign Council of the All
Progressives Congress, APC traversed the
country the message was also the same, a
candidate who opened himself to all men and
women so long as such a person was a believer
in the message. That portrayal was accentuated
at the inauguration when the president made the
memorable declaration: “I belong to everybody,
and I belong to nobody.” Just a year after, many
of those who purveyed that message of trust
claim to be in shock. That shock is particularly
evoked by the appointments made since the
advent of the administration, an issue that that
has repeatedly been echoed in cyberspace.
The issue was further brought to fore with the
constitution of the new board of the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC in which
no one from the entire Southeast Geopolitical
Zone was found fitting for appointment into the
board, despite having two active oil producing
states. Remarkably, no one from the oil-
producing region was found fitting for
appointment into the board of the nation’s prime
revenue earner.
The fears have not been helped by the now
widely publicised interview with the northern
enfant terrible, Dr. Junaid Mohammed in which
shocking allegations of nepotism were
echoed. Senator Sola Adeyeye has, however,
made a passionate rebuttal of the accusations of
domination of the Hausa/Fulani Muslim over the
polity with the particular reference of to the
super ministers, Babatunde Fashola and Rotimi
Amaechi. Even more, some in the South have
also punctured the assertions with the claim that
the Southerners who held high positions in the
past did not benefit their people.
“Stella Oduah and Osita Chidoka were ministers
of aviation, but it did not lift Enugu International
Airport from being an international disgrace,” one
Southern defender of the president told your
correspondent.
What is also shocking is the roiling temper
among some APC veterans who are increasingly
muttering over their exclusion from the change
regime. “If you don’t know somebody that knows
somebody, there is no way you can be
recognised whatever you did in the campaign,” is
an assertion that is increasingly flowing from
APC veterans from both North and South who
held key positions in the campaign. Many of
them have continued to rue the nonappointment
of Col. Hammed Ali as the president’s Chief of
Staff. Ali as Chief of Staff to the candidate was
the channel through whom many of the
campaigners liaised with.
In his absence, a new pharaoh who knew not
Joseph has arisen!